Sparrow Falling (27 page)

“
Bartholomew Simms?
”

“Large as life and twice as handsome. Now you just be still. Don’t want ’em all pounding up the stairs to see what’s wrong with the precious little kinchin, do we? Let’s just keep her sleeping. I’ll take her now.”

“What? What are you doing here? You can’t!” Evvie said.

“Oh, yes, I can, and I am.” He slid the knife out of his sleeve, and pressed it against her side. “What you feel there,” he said, “is my chiv. And I expect you might’ve heard, it’s an experienced blade, it is. Knows its job.” He heard her breathing catch and quicken. “Don’t make a fuss, and it won’t be getting no more experience, not tonight.”

“But... I’m supposed to...”

“I know exactly what you’re supposed to, young missy. Only Stug sent a girl to do a man’s job and I’m going to prove to him the error of his ways, bring him what he asked for all nice and neat and no questions asked.” Though he did have questions, oh, most definitely. He had a whole barrel of questions, not that he’d ask them of Stug, he’d find answers his own way, as to just what business his employer was getting his soft, pale, clean gentleman’s fingers into now. This was high-class business. Maybe some might consider it a little rich for the blood of such as Bartholomew Simms, but he’d never been one to turn down an opportunity before giving it a good looking-over. He moved around so he could get an arm under the baby without taking his blade from Evvie’s side. “Give her over.”

“You won’t hurt her?”

Bartholomew mentally shook his head. A typical female, it wasn’t as though she even knew this cub. “And why would I harm a hair of her precious little head? She’s why I’m here.”

Reluctantly, she eased the child into his arms. It barely stirred – Bartholomew wondered if it was doped, or sick, but that wasn’t his problem, so long as he delivered it whole and breathing.

“Now, as for you, missy,” he said, the little girl safely tucked inside his jacket, the flat of his blade still against Evvie’s side, “what shall we do with you?”

“You’ve got what you wanted,” she said. Her hands hung limp at her sides, as though she’d given up. “Just go, I’ll try and get out after you’ve gone.”

“How’d you get in?”

“I climbed.”

“And there’s me thinking you’d jawed your way in. And climbed how? I had a look and it didn’t seem any too easy to me.”

She jerked her head towards something in the corner. “Steps. They fold up. My... someone made them for me.”

He could just make it out. “Clever. How’d they work?”

“I can show you...”

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. You’re a sly-boots, Evvie Duchen. Slippery as waterweed. What if you should decide to call the servants up here, tell ’em some bad man went off with the little girl, eh?”

“Why would I do that? I’m no more s’posed to be here than you are!”

“Why? For vengeance? For spite? To take their minds off you or get in with Stug? Who knows, not me, and nor’d I care, not a whit. I just ain’t inclined for taking a risk. I’m a careful man, Evvie.”

She had guessed, and started to twist away. He drove his hand forward. She let out a breathless grunt, dropped limp over his arm.

He lowered her to the ground, grabbed the folding steps, saw in a moment how they opened. Neat, very neat. He swung up the sash, ah, this was like his old housebreaking days, before he’d found his real calling. He had his legs over the sill and his feet on the ledge below in a wink. The steps shook out, silently unfolding down into the dark below like Jacob’s ladder in reverse – they were even painted splotchy to hide their silhouette against the brickwork and disguise any shine. When he reached the bottom he rested his hand on them for a moment – seemed a shame to leave such a neat device – but then... he glanced up at the window. No. It would make it obvious she’d broken in, and if by any chance she was still alive – he should have checked, but his back hairs were telling him to get moving – anything she might have to say would be given the lie by this same device, so clever, so obviously burglarious in intent.

Simms shook his head and resettled his bowler. A waste. She was a clever girl, but now, alive or dead, she would be shut away in prison to rot. If she was so foolish as to mention Stug’s name, who was going to listen to her? All the same, he should warn Stug to come up with some tale, maybe even provide him with one. Which would put Stug further in his debt, whether he liked to acknowledge it or not.

Supporting the child’s slight breathing weight with one hand, Bartholomew Simms strolled into the night, a man well pleased with a job well done.

Bermondsey

B
ETH HUDDLED CLOSE
behind Ma as they walked. The area only seemed to get worse. The tiny narrow streets, the dense increasing stench, the grimy shuffling figures that sometimes scurried out of the way like vermin disturbed by light. Men lounged in doorways with their caps tipped over their eyes, but she could feel those eyes following her and Ma.

Eventually Ma gave a huff of exasperation and pulled Beth after her into a doorway.

“Wh... what is it?”

“Listen, you daft ha’porth,” Ma hissed. “You wondering why I keep the place I live in the way I do? Think I like that stinking mess out front? It’s all deception, innit. Anyone sees that, they en’t looking for something to prig, nor even somewhere to lay down less’n they’re proper desperate, and proper desperate I can deal with even caught sleeping. Now you see me? See how I walk? Place like this, you walk like a mouse, there’s going to be a dozen cats after you. You got to walk like the biggest savagest bastard dog that ever ripped a bullock’s throat out and ate tigers for afters.”

“Me?” Beth squeaked.

Ma looked her up and down. “Din’t you learn nothing from that actress at yer old school?”

“I’m no good at that stuff,” Beth said. “I’m not like Evvie.”

“No, you en’t. But you gotta have some armour, you gotta... here. You’re good at mechanisms, engines, right? Best in the school. Best outside it too, probably, better’n me, better’n this old fool we’re going to see, I en’t got no doubt at all. You’re an engineer like no-one else, the tip top at engines, you.”

“Well...”

“So you get that in your head. You get that in your eyes and your chin and your shoulders and your stride. Anyone or anything makes you nervous, you just think –
I can build an engine that’d run right over you, if I’d a mind. I can hear the heart of metal and make it beat to my drum, I can, and you en’t nothing to me
. Right?”

Beth stood for a moment blinking, as though in sudden light. “The heart of metal,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

“Good. Keep that in yer head and come on.” Ma let go of her arm and stalked off, the biggest savagest bastard dog in the street.

Beth started to scurry after her and thought,
I’m an Engineer, I know the heart of metal.
And she set her feet to a beat of brass, and strode on after Ma.

T
HE
‘
OLD FOOL
’ turned out to be a skinny, grimy, whip of a man with a few strands of grey hair crawling across an age-spotted skull, hugely-knuckled hands so ingrained with oil and random dirt that every crease and line stood out like a contour map, and a high pitched whinny of a laugh.

He peered at them around one side of a great heavy iron double door, set in a high brick wall beyond which Beth could hear enticing clangs and smell the scent of machine oil.

“Oh, so you wants a favour, eh?” he said. “Well well, what’s brought Ma Pether so low?”

“I don’t want a favour,” Ma said. “I don’t ask for favours, Augustus Drape. I come for a payment.”

“What payment?” Augustus Drape scowled. “I don’t owe you no payment.” He pulled the door closer, so only one eye, a long nose, a strip of scalp and a few fingers were visible. He put Beth in mind of the grumpy, wattled cockerels she’d seen glaring out of their cages at the market.

Ma looked at her fingernails. “Little matter of a job down Southwark way, last June, and a piece of equipment what was supposed to turn up, and didn’t, and me getting away by the skin of my grandmother’s last remaining tooth. You owe me, Augustus. You owe me ’cos I didn’t come and drag you out of your hole and chuck you in the Thames with one of your engines tied to your scrawny neck.”

“Ah. Southwark, was it? Don’t know as I remember that...”

“Oh, I think you do. Having a bad memory, in your business, that’d be unfortunate, that would. Do your reputation no end of harm, that would. And since I’m being generous enough
not
to take it out of your hide, Mr Drape, I’d thank you to let us in like a proper gent before... well, let’s say before I remember how long I had to hide in the sewers that night. In June. When it was hotter’n hell and twice as stinksome.”

Ma Pether seemed to have got taller as she was talking. She was taller than Drape to start with, but somehow during this conversation she had stretched, and he had shrunk. She loomed and he scriggled up like a dried pea, and then with obvious reluctance edged open the door just enough to let the two of them pass.

The door led to a half-roofed yard, lit pale and hissing with gas-lamps, full of carts and steam-cars and even what looked to Beth very much like a steam-tricycle; every sort of vehicle, some half-built, most in poor repair, including at least one that was so neglected it was hard to tell what it had been before it became little but rust and holes.

“So what can I do you for?” said Mr Drape, who, having given up on keeping them out, seemed to have recovered a kind of pessimistic cheer.

“I need something as is fast, carries at least five, and won’t get noticed,” Ma said.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his grey-bristled chin, “to be fair, you can have one, or you can have t’other, but likely not both. I does machines, not magic. Who’s this then?” He said, looking Beth up and down.

“She’s an engineer,” Ma said. “And she knows a rivet from a watchspring, so don’t think you can pass off any old rubbish, Augustus. You try, and... well.”

“All right, all right, there’s no need for unpleasantness, now is there?”

“Not if you get us what we want, there isn’t.”

“Fast, and unnoticeable. Depends which’s most important. What sort of place you taking it into?”

“High-class.”

“Hmm. Buildings close together?”

“Probably.”

“Peelers?”

“Likely.”

“People? Crowds?”

“Maybe.”

“What sort? Fancy?”

“Most like. Maybe mixed, but mostly toffs.”

“Now, see,” Drape said, “what you want there, I reckon, ain’t inconspicuous. You turn up in something looks like a butcher’s cart, it’s going to stick out like a spare prick at a wedding, that is.” He saw Beth’s blush, and snickered. “Engineer, is it?”

“She’s been brought up proper, unlike you,” Ma said. “Don’t pay him no mind, Beth, he’s a dirty old codger. He’s right, though. So, what you got that’s fancy?”

“Oh, I got a few things. But it depends on the price.”

“What price?”

“Look, I understand, but you got to give me some room here, Ma. I lend out one of my best pieces, I got no guarantee it’s coming back whole, have I?”

Beth, looking around the yard, could see little that could be described as whole, never mind fancy. And this was taking far too long.

“Ma.”

“In a minute, Beth.”

“Ma, there’s nothing here. It’s all rubbish. We need another way.”

“Now, don’t you be so quick to judge, young madam,” Drape said.

“I can see your stock. This lot? Most of it would take even me a week to get into running order, and we’ve not got time. Ma, let’s go, please? Find someone else?”

“There ain’t no-one else got what I’ve got,” Drape said. “You come along of me.”

“Come on,” Ma said. “We’ll give the old fool five minutes, then, we’re off.” She fixed Drape with her steely eye. “And you’ll
still
owe me.”

Reluctantly, Beth followed them along an oily track between the half-dismembered machines. Normally she’d have been longing for a chance to rummage, polish, tighten – to find usable parts, to take apart what couldn’t be rescued and rescue what could, make it better, make it gleam and speed. But now, all she could think of was Evvie, and what might be happening to her. Her gut kept tightening with every minute that passed.

Drape shoved aside a rusted sheet of corrugated iron, and ducked through the resulting gap. His hand came out and beckoned.

Ma frowned. “I don’t
think
he’s stupid enough to try and pull something,” she said, aloud, obviously not caring if Drape or any of the oily shadow figures among the machines heard, “but you stay behind me, girl. I got me popper.” She pulled something out from inside her coat. Beth saw the thing in her hand and stifled a groan. Ma was fond of a bit of tinkering herself, and the ‘popper,’ a kind of pistol, was one of her latest toys. Beth had no idea where she’d found it, but though it was fancy-looking as all getout, judging by recent events she wouldn’t trust it not to fire up, down or backwards.

“You’re a suspicious old bat, Ma Pether,” came Drape’s voice, echoing back from a large space.

“Not suspicious enough, or I’d never have got mixed up with you,” she growled. “Come on, Beth.”

Ma wrenched the opening wider, but her bulk blocked any chance of Beth seeing what was ahead as she wriggled after her.

Into a treasure chamber.

The lamps in here were no more nor brighter than those outside, but every surface their light fell on threw it back tenfold. Shining glass and gleaming brass, bronze glowing like a flame. Glossy paintwork: burgundy, ebony, forest green. There was a superlative Serpollet fit for a duke – and probably formerly belonging to one (so sleekly black and plumply cared for she almost expected it to purr) and a chunky De Dion steam tricycle.

And in the corner, on a stand, by itself... “Oh,” Beth said.

“What’s that when it’s at home?” Ma said.

“S’an aerial steamer,” Drape said. “Ain’t working, though.” He patted the Serpollet. “Now
this
beauty’ll chew up the road and spit it out behind her, she will.”